I’ve waited awhile to publish this, because I know that it
reflects a pretty delicate topic. That being said, I think that it is my
responsibility as an agvocate and a person to try to explain to others where I’m
coming from.
Here goes: growing up on a farm I’ve always been fairly in
touch with my food sources. I knew that hamburger came from cows, and that
chickens are in fact, made of chicken. So, I guess compared to many I was
already more involved with my food than a lot of people nowadays.
That being said, I had never knowingly eaten one of our
cows. (Who knows what happened once they were shipped – surely they ALL went on
to become someone’s herd bull, right? RIGHT!?!?!) Or any other animal that I
had grown. I can remember scoffing at an acquaintance when she suggested that I
butcher my own chickens. “I could never do that!” I thought it was horrible. She
was horrible. She was heartless. She was cold. But she was right. Somewhere
along the line my thinking changed. I guess I’ve got to eat some crow, or more
literally chicken.
That’s right. Captain America and I butchered 20 chickens.
Based on the reactions of the two friends I have shared the
experience with already I’m guessing that you’re either going to tell me that I
am “as extreme as the people who climb Mt. Everest”, or stare at me slack jawed
in abject horror. So, before I get started, let me share with you WHY it was
important to me to butcher chickens.
A few years ago I went on a cruise with friends and the
captain of our little catamaran caught a fish for dinner. I had never seen a
fish killed before. Actually, I had never seen anything butchered before. It
was a very eye opening experience. I said a prayer for that fish and I swore I would
never again take any life for granted – fish, fowl, bug, or beast. Previously I
was content to live with a nice protective layer of cellophane shielding me
from the reality that there is a smidge of accuracy to the whole “meat is
murder” bit, but no longer. I decided that if I was going to continue to eat
meat it was my responsibility to make sure it was as ethical as possible.
Basically, if I couldn’t stomach seeing a cow turned into
burger, I needed to stop eating them. If I couldn’t actually be a part of my
food chain then I didn’t respect the creature that had given up its life for
me. I don’t think this is right for everyone, but for me being raised around
and loving animals it was a choice I had to make. I felt like I owe it to them.
That’s the number one reason that I had to do this. I love
those critters, and I want them to have great lives and then suffer as little
as possible. I can eat those roosters and know that they spent their days
running around the yard, eating bugs, annoying the dogs, and doing rooster
things without ever being locked in a tiny cage or treated cruelly (except by
each other because roosters are MEAN). I know that their deaths were as swift
and painless as we could make them.
That cellophane wrapper on a frozen package of chicken
breasts is the best insulation from reality that I know. Thin clear plastic
sanitizes the world. It keeps the messy reality at bay. Those tenders were once
living, breathing creatures. Every bite of chicken wasted is a death in vain.
After watching them die and doing my part to turn them from roosters
into packages of chicken, I feel like I can better appreciate their lives. My
life. The world. How delicate life really is. The careful balance of things.
Yeah. I’m kind of a melodramatic hippy about it.
**Warning: Things might get a little graphic and disturbing
from here on in, so if you’re the kind of reader who would respond to
butchering chickens with abject horror you should probably not keep reading.**
So, what was it like? This was our process: CA creates a
headless chicken and my job is to simply grab the chicken corpse and hang it up
so that the fluid drains. That sounds easy enough, right? I got the easy job.
The clean job. I didn’t have to murder anything so I thought I choose
correctly. Ha. By the end of it I looked like an axe murderer, and CA (the
actual axe murderer) wasn’t even stained. Go figure.
I had always pictured “running around like a chicken with
your head cut off” to mean running in circles, maybe some zigzags; but the
first time I saw a chicken with its head cut off I understood that what I
pictured when I heard that colloquialism was dead wrong. Chickens don’t run
with their heads cut off, not even a little bit, or at least ours didn’t. They
leap four frickin’ feet in the air and flop all over the yard like bloody Koosh
balls. Have you ever tried to catch an uncooperative dog? You know where you’ll
run up to it and then suddenly it practically teleports 20 feet away? It’s like
that, only ickier. Much ickier.
Heinlein was right, the
purpose of laughter is to keep from crying.
Faced with the horrible
landscape before me I started cackling like a mad woman. I’m pretty sure it was either that or start
sobbing uncontrollably.
After the fluids drained out, we would cut one down, dunk it
in 165 degree water a few times to loosen the feathers and drop it in CA’s
homemade chicken plucker (that worked like a fricking champion). If you ever
plan on doing this I would highly recommend looking into a Whiz Bang Chicken
Plucker. It made the process much more efficient. The spinning tub with rubber
fingers removes the feathers very easily. I plucked one by hand in my great-grandma's memory, and that was enough to convince me that some things are DEFINITELY glorified in the sustainable living magazines.
After that, I would remove the feet
and pass it on to CA to clean it the rest of the way. He has been field
dressing deer and other wild game for years, and I’m guessing that’s a
transferable skill because he rocked. We discarded the organs to become dog
food. As my grandpa would have said, “waste not, want not.” Also, by home
butchering we were able to be sure that every usable bit got used. That made the hippy part of my head very
happy.
The next step was to place the chickens in a circulating cold water bath
until we finished cleaning them. Then we wrapped each one in butcher paper and
put it in the chest freezer.
We easily could have added another step and boned the birds,
but I prefer to roast them whole so that I can toss the carcasses into a crock
pot and make my own broth. Plus, truthfully, I was exhausted. It was only about
six hours of work, but it was pretty draining. Though, now I have enough
chicken to last for about six months which is pretty cool.
So, yeah. That was my weekend. How was yours?
